


Villains and Vagaries

by swindalynn



Category: Wonder Woman (Comics)
Genre: Enemies to friends (?) annnnnnnd then back to enemies (?) but are they still really enemies?, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-26
Updated: 2019-02-26
Packaged: 2019-11-05 20:49:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17926115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swindalynn/pseuds/swindalynn
Summary: Set after Wonder Woman Rebirth #24, Diana has insisted on coming over every day to clean and bandage Veronica Cale's wounds. This time together is as fragile and uneasy as their relationship, but it does give Cale some insight into Diana, or herself, even if she refuses to see it.This is loosely part of my Red Wonder series that pairs Wonder Woman and Batwoman. They are not the central relationship in this fic, but they are mentioned, so, I dunno, be warned, I guess? Or not.





	Villains and Vagaries

She’s been coming every day since Barbara tried to kill me. She says it’s because I have refused to seek professional services for the mark of the Cheetah clawed into my back. Seventeen inch long gashes an inch and a half across at the widest and half an inch deep. Eight of them, stretching from the small of my back to just below my scapula. Maybe I deserve these. I deserve something like it anyway.

I said that to her the first day she came, after she had scolded me for letting the wounds weep open without proper tending to. She said infection could settle in if it healed improperly. I think I scoffed at her. This pretty face of hers with her eyes that say she cares, it’s all a ploy. A good one, mind you. She’s even fooled herself into believing it. So, anyway, there we were, me face down on my bed hanging over the edge so I can sip brandy from a straw and her, Wonder Woman, Diana the little miss of the Justice League, cleaning my back and dressing it.

“I will come to redress it tomorrow,” she says now and I think I scoff

“What even for? If you were coming to gloat, I’d understand, but you’re not and that’s even more irritating,” I say. “Besides, I deserve these. I’ve earned them. And you want to take them away from me too?”

She doesn't answer immediately. I can hear the crinkle of wrappers and the dull sound of liquid antiseptic sloshing in a bottle. Then the movement stops. 

“I know why you hate me, Veronica.” Her voice is eerily soft. Almost makes me believe that fact wounds her, that she can be wounded. 

I look over my shoulder at her the best I can without pulling the gashes too badly. She looks hurt, pained even. How awful a person would it make me if I said seeing that one expression on her face makes me feel better? Or maybe, it makes her feel human. Fallible. Like me. 

“I really don’t think you do,” I tell her. “I don’t think you’re capable of knowing.”

If she wasn’t hurt before, she is definitely hurt after that. I almost feel sorry for saying it. Almost. How can a god know anything about a human heart? They can’t. They can’t even fathom. Maybe they make an educated guess, but they will never really know what it feels like to be us standing next to them. 

“I know you don’t trust me,” she says as I sip from my crystal tumbler. “I know you don’t trust anything I bring with me from my world.”

I think I cackle at her. It's hard to differentiate with the burn of alcohol down my throat. The brandy in my hand is nearly dry now.

“Wonder Woman, I don’t trust anyone who isn’t me. Especially anyone beyond human.” And now the brandy is dry. “You aren’t so special.”

I see her round the corner of the bed and come to kneel in front of me. She takes my empty glass away and sets it on the side table. I suddenly feel ridiculous hanging over the edge of the bed like this, unable to even look up at her.

“Perhaps if you called me Diana, I wouldn’t feel so distant from you,” she says and I feel her hand on my head. 

“No,” I say, “I don’t think so.”

I don’t know what she looks like in this moment of silence and I don’t want to. I don’t give a shit how she looks or what she is thinking when she leans over and kisses the top of my head like I am a child, or a lover, or someone who doesn't hate her. The nerve of her. 

“I will be back tomorrow, Veronica. I will see you then.” 

And then she leaves. Just like that. With me the way I am. She’d left me my gashes, freshly burning beneath clean bandages. I told her I’d earned them. I told her they were mine, bought and paid for, a worthy return for a risky investment, but the burn of that condescending kiss makes me feel like all of that is foolish. It makes me curse.

Veronica Cale, you deserve this.

-

I hate the level of care in her expression when she pulls back the bandages and inspects the progress of my awards. I have taken to see her in my sitting room where there is a sturdy wooden chair I can sit half-dressed and backwards with my arms resting along the back. 

I chose this room because of the chair, but there’s also the mirror hanging on the wall that allows me to see her face as we talk. There is something too vulnerable about having my back to someone and not being able to see her face. I can’t stand it, not even during sex. You can’t tell if someone is lying if you can’t see their face.

Right now, she looks mildly concerned. It’s not healing at a rate she expected it to, or perhaps not as cleanly as she had hoped. I rest my chin on my folded forearms and keep watch on her through the mirror.

“Disappointed?” I ask her. “Guess even my body doesn’t like you.”

“I’m concerned it will scar and the end result will be something you are not happy with,” she tells me and her eyebrows furrow lightly. “You are a woman who takes great care of her beauty.”

She says it so casually and I don’t know if it’s a compliment or an insult. Of course, I put effort in it. Her appeal is a woman’s most valuable weapon. It’s her first and last defense, her not-so-secret source of self. The one thing that will always be hers and hers alone.

“We can’t all be gifted by goddesses,” I tell her with a small huff when I feel the cool sting of water in one of the deeper gashes.

“Isn’t that what makes your beauty more impressive than mine? There is nothing of me that isn’t orchestrated, but you are naturally blessed,” she says, eyes concentrating so hard on the task before her that it irritates me. 

Couldn’t she bother to look at someone when she says something like that? And such a ridiculous thought. I can’t help the question that springs from my tongue.

“You honestly think I’m more attractive than you?” I ask her, lifting my head. “You, the literal princess consistently listed in every publications fifty most beautiful people?”

As if she can sense me watching, her eyes lift to the mirror and catches my gaze. The look she gives me is so genuine it pisses me off.

“Yes, I do honestly think that,” she says. “What use is my face to my own eyes? I would much rather look at someone else's loveliness.”

I can’t help but stare at her. I can’t understand her. There is nothing relatable about her at all. My face tightens with my mood. My eyes narrow at her reflection.

“Why do you insist on coming every day only to be glared at while your integrity is questioned and placed on trial?”

Now she returns to her task and her fingers are light against the edges of a wound, testing the crust developing there. She really is so disappointed it them. 

“Because you need me to,” she says and all I can do is stare at her. “You’re hurt far worse than your back and your entire person refuses to let any of your wounds heal. You are in need of someone right now. This is a dark you should not have to journey alone.”

This makes me roll my eyes. How typically Wonder. She says things like this that sound warm and fluffy and tricks everyone into thinking is profound, but when actually examining the words, they’re found to be worthless. These words mean absolutely nothing. Dark journey, she says. Shouldn’t have to travel it alone. What the hell does any of that mean?

“If I walk to walk with someone, I’m not sure I’d want to walk it with you.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t, but who else would be willing to with you right now, Doctor Cale?”

Her words hurt more than I want to admit. It’s frustrating how right she is, that she even knows she’s right. I don’t have anyone anymore. Not Izzy, not Adrianna, not even that witch Circe. Wonder here thinks that the biggest reason why I hate her is because she’s perfect, a godling humoring us all with her precious time and attention. You want to know the real reason? The one thing I hate about her more than anything else?

I hate how just looking at her reminds me of how alone I really am. I hate how lonely her presence makes me. 

Jesus. This is pathetic.

With a sigh, I rest my cheek on my arms and close my eyes before saying, “When you look at it that way, isn’t that just a negative way of saying at least I still have you?” 

Without hesitation or shame, she replies, “But if we put it like that, doesn't that say you will always have me, even though you don’t want me?”

I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t take her anymore. I have to adjust my head so I can cover my eyes with a hand to calm myself.

“I hate that’s the single most romantic thing ever said to me and it came from you of all people.” My head shakes lightly while ignoring the bite of the gashes flaring lightly with her work. “And you don’t even mean it like that.”

Now she pauses and I swear I can feel her hands hover above my exposed flesh. She has a presence so powerful it’s almost physical. I have to admit that at least. 

“May I ask you something?” 

“For a week straight, you’ve had your fingers literally in my muscle and seen me half naked every day, Wonder,” I tell her with a shrug. “What’s a single question compared to all that?”

In the mirror I can see her frown. I can’t help but find it gorgeous on her. She places a fresh gauze over the deepest part of the first gash and secured it with a strip of medical tape.

“Have you always disliked me?” she asks, making quick work of the other open streaks along my back.

“Not always. When you first arrived, I couldn’t have cared less about you.”

“What happened that gave you such a strong unfavorable opinion of me?” she asks. “What did I do that was so terrible?”

She looks at my reflection in the mirror. God. I really am a villain, Adrianna, to find her so much more appealing in sorrow than in joy. Part of me is flattered I can stir a feeling in her that can make such a face.

“You did nothing, princess. We’re just opposing ends of the same magnet. All we can do is repel each other.”

She begins to wrap my upper my torso in larger gauze, reaching her arms around my chest first to pass the roll. I straighten up to make it easier, otherwise it feels too much like an abandoned hug with each pass. She secures the gauze to itself near my waist and sits back, looking at me again in the mirror, troubled and melancholic.

“I’m not repelled by you,” she says, disapprovingly. “I’m rather drawn to you, Doctor Cale, especially now. Right now, you are the one person in the world who shares the grief in my heart over the longing for Themyscira. I’d hoped that if we can’t seek comfort together, at least, this is one thing we will always understand about each other.”

I can’t help but laugh. What a turn of events this has turned out to be. How hilarious my atonement to this woman is to accept that my relationship with her is the most intimate I’ve ever felt. Cale, what the hell is wrong with you?

“Careful there, Wonder,” I say, slipping a leg from the side of the chair to stand. I reach for the light cotton robe I'd tossed aside earlier. “Your boy toy might get the wrong idea.” 

At first, she’s perplexed by the comment and it takes her a minute to grasp. She picks up the robe before I can and then the realization finally strikes her.

“You're referring to Steven?” she asks, almost too innocently and too amused for her own good. “I’m afraid you are the one with the wrong idea. He and I have a close bond, yes. Through his mother, my namesake. We are the gifts to each other she left us.”

She holds out the robe for me to ease an arm in a sleeve, but I have to lift an eyebrow to make it clear this is something she should rethink.

“You aren’t clearing up the misconception, you know. That sounds an awful lot like one of those infuriating soulmate stories.”

Now she laughs, a proper one, filled with the appropriate mirth. I’ll be damned. She’s actually enjoying this conversation with me.

“Steve and I will be linked through every lifetime in some way, yes,” she says and dangles the robe until I finally slip inside. “I'm not sure it's what you are thinking, though.”

I take a step back to eye her while I tie the robe at my waist with careful movements. The smile she offers me is ...kind, and a little eager for acceptance of this explanation. I could almost find it endearing if it ever caught me off guard and vulnerable.

“You’re not really good at romance, are you?” I ask her, crossing my arms loosely to not pull at the wounds on my back.

She looks sheepish and I can’t help but wonder how easily she moves from one emotion to the next.

“No, Doctor Cale,” she tells me. “I have been told I’m not.”

I shrug off her unexpectedly candid response and start for the kitchen in the next room, letting my voice trail loud enough behind for her to hear.

“Then thank your gods, princess. That’s another thing you’ll be happy to know we share in common.” I flick a hand in the air to accent how much I personally don't care. “Do I need to feed you lunch as well or are you taking off?”

I’m not surprised when she follows me across the room and stops where the kitchen tile begins.

“I should not overstay my barely tolerated welcome in your lovely home,” she says. 

This makes me glance over my shoulder at her. Hm. Self-deprecating, dry realist humor. I suppose that fits someone wholesome like her.

“I see.” I only nod and open the fridge. “So, there is a Mr. Wonder awaiting your return then, even if might not be precious Steve Trevor.”

I think I’m seeing things. I must be imagining it. There is no possible way on this earth there is a faint blush creeping across her cheeks. How many new expressions of hers I’ve seen today does that make now? Four? Five? She gives a smile that pleads guilty as charged.

“Ah, caught you red handed, I guess.”

“There is a woman named Kate in Gotham,” she tells me and I pause with the refrigerator door still wide open, “but we are nowhere near personal titles such as those.”

A woman, huh? In a way, I guess that makes some kind of sense. I can’t say it’s too surprising. Without removing anything, I let the fridge door close.

“A little out of the way, don’t you think? Gotham? She must be something special to catch your interest above anyone already near you. You’ve got the pick of the seas and you want the one at the bottom of the Marianna Trench. You really do suck at romance, don’t you?”

“She’s said something similar like that to me before,” she says, but smiles. “It seems many people think it is difficult to catch my attention that way at all.”

“Is it?”

“Yes, I think so.” She nods and then looks my way. “To be honest, I thought you might be much the same.”

“Now there you are all wrong.” I fix a pointed stare at her. “My attention is easy to catch. It’s keeping it everyone fails at.”

She leans forward on my kitchen island and watches me open the pantry to look passed all the food in there and declare the house empty.

“Forgive my rudeness, but you don’t strike me much like someone terribly bothered by that,” she says.

“I’m not. Things get messy when they run too long. Objectivity gets clouded. Whatever it is Colonel Trevor is to you, I want nothing like it, and you’d better make damn well sure this Special K woman of yours understands that better than I do.”

The way she nods in acceptance, like listening to advice from someone who wanted to discredit and humiliate her, strikes me as overly serious.

“I will be sure to have that conversation with her,” she says with a solemn finality. “Thank you for your insight.”

“As I live and breathe.” I mutter with a soft scoff and pull my phone from my back pocket. “I’m ordering take out. I’ll only let you have half of whatever I decide to get if you swear I’ve seen the last of that god-awful smitten look you flashed just now when you told me her name.”

“I thought you said we could never be friends,” she says and it’s the first time she’s dared to question me on anything, even light-heartedly like this, since the first day she arrived with a med kit and a treatment plan.

I pull my eyes from the mobile menu and glance her way.

“We can’t.” I nod to reaffirm the statement and then return to my phone. “But even allies and Germans had one Christmas dinner together in the middle of a brutal trench battle.”

Wonder looks at me from across my own kitchen and says, “I hope we are not also limited to just one take out lunch, Doctor Cale.” 

I am about to tap the call button and bring the phone to my ear, but the sight of her, the novelty of it perhaps, in my kitchen and my home stops me. Not many people in the world know what this looks like. Why am I one of them?

“I'm not making any promises, Wonder,” I tell her. “I have a perfectly good name I like to go by. Use it.”

There is a small spark of defiance in her now that I find mildly intriguing.

“And I have one as well you are welcome to use,” she says with devastating calm hiding her amusement.

We eye each other in the kitchen for a moment before I break away and hit dial, placing the phone against my ear and my free hand on my hip.

“Wonder it is then,” I say, turning away from her.

She only smiles.

“Yes, Wonder it is then, Doctor Cale.”

-

So, this is how things have progressed is it? She comes, changes bandages, and then sits with me for an unknown amount of time until one of us silently decides that time is over and the other silently understands. I don’t understand it myself. It’s like just knowing, intimately, somewhere inside. 

From what she has described of her whatever-relationship-slash-understanding with Precious Trev, this seems remarkably close. She probably doesn’t even know it then. That it’s not Steve Trevor she’s bonded to for circumstances beyond her control. It’s whoever she chooses to bond to. And she can bond anyone, for any chosen length of time, and to more than one person at a time. Right now, it is our time and our time will last only as long as the wounds on my back. We both seem to understand and neither deny this as anything less than it is or ask for anything more.

Makes me wonder what I was to her in a previous life. Maybe a snake that bit her.

She’s taken to asking my opinion on somewhat personal matters, matters of the heart if you’d believe that, as if I’m some goddamned expert. As it turns out, this Kate-in-Gotham doesn’t even know Wonder Woman fancies her yet. Because she seriously does suck at romance and is stupidly emotionally unaware of her own romantic feelings.

I want to laugh. I want to call that reporter Lois Lane and have her write an expose. Take down the public image of her a bit. The old Veronica Cale would have. Wherever the hell she went.

Might explain why she and Precious Trev haven’t started anything. Hard to believe an All-American blonde haired, blue-eyed soldier like Trevor wouldn't have wanted to with a gorgeous exotic princess. It’s not that they wouldn’t have naturally become something. It’s that her heart is just stupid. She might be the only the person in the whole damned world who can literally choose who she falls in love with. The catch is, she has to choose. That’s a conscious decision and not one someone as romantically dumb as she is would ever think to make.

Well, still. I’ve found her floundering around in the dark about Kate-in-Gotham somewhat entertaining in this time of isolation and healing I’ve put myself in.

Today, I’ve convinced her to try hundred year old scotch. She’s not a fan. But the cough she gives and the scrunching of her face at the taste is worth the patience and coercion used to get it. She hands me back the glass and thanks me with the manners of a princess. Guess I’m getting used to her. It doesn’t irritate me as much as it used to.

“So how’s your girlfriend doing then?” I ask her accepting the glass and sitting back in my chair. The way she flushes kills me. 

“She’s not-.” She pauses when she sees me cast her a judgmental look. Then she says, “Is that what I want her to be?”

My back has healed to a point of dull pain and I can, finally, sleep relatively a full night on it now. When I sip my scotch, the burn is so smooth and pleasant I can’t help but relish it as it goes down.

“You tell me,” I say. “They’re your feelings, not mine.”

She frowns. 

“You can’t tell me you’ve never had a girlfriend. Not in your entire time on a paradise of women?”

“Not in the sense that term means here. We have relations, but one person doesn’t hold a monopoly of those affections automatically.”

“But you’ve had 'relations', right?” I ask, air-quoting the word to tell her without telling her how ridiculous I find that phrasing. “You can’t possibly be that pretty and still be a virgin, Wonder.”

I think she blushes a little. That makes me feel empowered. I don’t think it’s the topic that embarrasses her, so it must be the compliment.

“Yes, I’ve had relations,” she says. 

“But were any of them girlfriends? Did you love any of them, Wonder? Was it just sex for you and affectionate friendship or was there someone, or a few someone’s maybe, who made your heart flutter? Someone who made you blush or you wanted to make you blush outside of sex?”

Her frown deepens. This is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard, I think. How good and wholesome and absolutely not Christian she’s turned out to be. 

“Not at home, no.”

“I see.” I say and nod, completely aware of how mysterious this comes off to her. “You’ve got all that experience, but none of the love. You know, people use you as a symbol for abstinence education and the divine connection between love and sex. You should really set them straight on that.”

Her glance finds its way to the open window where the breeze blows through green leaves of a nearby tree. 

“There is a divine connection between those things, Doctor Cale,” she tells me. 

I laugh so hard I almost choke on my scotch.

“Sure, but not all the time, and certainly, for everyone present in this room at least, not necessary either.”

“You’re suggesting I don’t require that connection with either Steve or Kate. That there is love with Steve and sex with Kate, but not both for either.”

“I don’t know.” I wait long enough without an answer before continuing. “For their sake, don’t flirt with them until you know the answer to that question.”

“I don’t flirt irresponsibly, Doctor Cale.” She’s offended.

“Listen, Wonder, your very presence woos, your attention is a flirt, and your gaze is a seduction, whether you mean it or not. That’s why, after only meeting you once, everyone loves you whether they want to or not.”

She doesn’t look away when she says, “Except you.”

I nod and finish my scotch.

“Except me.” 

-

It’s the last time. The bandages are coming off for good. My back is scarred like a tiger and there are few places where it still scabs with a little light pink flesh beneath it, but it doesn’t need tending to anymore. I am a healed woman. Relatively. 

I feel her fingers run lightly over the lengths of the marks they leave, rewards, trophies, the awards given for my sins I will wear forever like a rank earned. Well, at least it’s some place I can’t see them every day. 

“It is a shame,” she says when she pulls her fingers back and then helps to draw the starched white shirt back up my shoulders. 

“What is?” I ask, flicking my hair from the collar and buttoning as I turn to face her. “The scars? The only disadvantage I see of them is that I won’t be able to wear a backless gown anymore, but even that is more a loss for me than anyone else.”

“You would still look just as beautiful now in such a gown as you did before,” she tells me with a tone and an expression I can’t figure out. “Anyone who would find it off putting would not be worth the shame they would wish upon you.”

I eye her carefully. This has been happening more frequently in the time we’ve spent together. When I think I’ve heard from her lips the most flattering thing I’ve ever been told by anyone, she will one up herself with something even more.

“You need to stop saying things like that to women who are not your girlfriend. People frequently get the wrong idea.” I warn her and tell myself it’s for her own good. “You have time for one last lunch with your enemy, Wonder? I was thinking about going out today.”

I start for the kitchen door and she catches my elbow gently with her fingers.

“Doctor Cale.”

The reaction is instinctual. It happens before I can think twice about it. I pull my elbow from her grasp, grimace at my crude action, and force my voice to mimic hers, staring at her over my shoulder. 

“Wonder.” 

“Veronica.” 

My eyebrow arches at this, warning her with a simple look. I can tell she sees the warning, but pays it no mind. She dares to replace her hand on my elbow as if she knows this time I won't knock it away. She's right. I don't. 

“Do you still think we cannot become friends?” she asks me. 

She looks a little afraid of my answer to that question. It never fails for me. The way fear or hurt come to her face makes me look so much more lovely. If I were a decent person, that might make me feel bad, but in this time we've had together I've decided not to deny who I am. Cheetah called me a villain. That is exactly what I am. A villain. And a villain always likes when the hero hurts. Still, I have to wonder. Where is the Wonder Woman who looked at me with such confidence behind her compassion? The Wonder who carried herself so sure, who watched and observed me so carefully, knowing just when to push and just went to back away? Where is she?

“I don't want to be your friend. I have never wanted to be your friend,” I tell her and lift my chin lightly so she knows how serious I am about this, but her eyes. Oh, how she looks at me, wanting something she has not voiced and that I cannot guess. I both relish and hate it. Give me back my Wonder. 

“I cannot express how sad that makes me after the time we've spent together,” she says, but despite the words and the pang of sorrow in her expression, she does not let my gaze go, “or how much I wish you felt otherwise.” 

I can feel a familiar anger growing inside me, churning over so quickly with thoughts that it threatens to turn into disgust. Ah, there's the old Veronica Cale. It seems she returns little by little with each day Cheetah's mark heals. It's nice to see her, but I'm not her again yet, not completely. There is still this current me so influenced by this impossible intimate month or so of healing that lingers behind the head strong Veronica who was never afraid to go after the things she wants. 

I take a tiny step toward her, minute really as she has already stepped into my personal space. My hand finds her cheek, not to hold or claim, not to covet or want beyond this, simply just to hold her still so the trajectory is accurate. I kiss her cheek and she does not move away.

This is, after all, our last day like this, before we go back to Wonder Woman and Veronica Cale. How else could this have ended, really? When she says those things and looks at me in the ways that she has? When she seeks and values my words and less-than-favorable opinions of her? How else could I have responded?

“No, Diana, we cannot be friends,” I tell her again and maybe we both understand this a little bit more than we did five minutes ago. Now I step away and this time her fingers let my elbow slip away. “Well, I will have to raincheck this last lunch then. I'm no longer hungry. Thank you for your concern, Wonder Woman. I'll be seeing you.” 

Then I leave the room because she doesn't require my escort. After all, she saw herself into my life without invitation. I'm sure she's more than capable of seeing herself out.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this sometime last year after I finished To Come Up Breathing and before I started Courtship. Again, as with Incidental, I hadn't intended to share. It was just self-indulgent exploration and I never bothered to figure out what canon I was following regarding Steve, Cale, and Themyscira. Weird mix of Rebirth canon and Perez continuity maybe? As Cale seems to be becoming a focus now in canon media, I wanted to at least put this out there, confusing canon be damned.
> 
> Series wise, this is set sometime during Incidental Happenings (maybe?), which I've been tempted to turn into a proper chaptered fic, because so much should happen in it. I mean, what idiot skips the "falling in love" part of a love story? Answer: This idiot.
> 
> I know I had said Breathing was the only first person story I would ever write. This is me eating my words fried and with tonkatsu sauce. the end.


End file.
